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Harrisville will collect, reimburse spring taxes

HARRISVILLE — The 5-mill property tax increase recently passed by the borough won’t go into effect until the beginning of 2025, but Harrisville residents will see the increase reflected in the amount collected in their spring 2024 taxes.

Council decided Monday, March 4, to collect the taxes at the higher rate and then reimburse the excess after cards with the higher rate were already printed and ready to be mailed to taxpayers in the borough.

“We cannot have taxes charged to our taxpayers that weren’t done legally,” council president Kathy Bray said.

Though intended for the 2024 year, the tax increase — which would have been from 11.5 to 16.5 mills — will not be adopted until January 2025. Bray previously said the paperwork was not signed by the attorney or filed with the county treasurer, making the increase null this year.

The tax is based on a property’s assessed value, which varies per property. One mill is equal to $1 in property tax, which is levied per $1,000 of a property’s assessed value.

The average taxable property in Harrisville would pay an extra $53.60 annually, according to a county report. The total assessed value of all taxable properties within the borough and the total number of tax bills recorded on the county liability report, as provided by the assessment department, indicate the average assessed value of a taxable property in Harrisville is $10,720.

If council had not decided to reimburse the taxes, they would have needed to reprint tax cards, covering the cost of printing and postage. The council decided against this because doing so would have missed the deadline to distribute tax cards by two weeks.

If the tax increase had passed for the 2024 year, it would have helped the borough offset its $21,000 deficit in the 2024 budget. The budget laid out a total income of $605,847 and the total expenses as $627,018.

At the Feb. 19 meeting, Bray said the council may slash the deficit by cutting attorney and professional accounting fees. “Professional accounting fees for sewage” amount to $19,440, according to the budget.

Fall taxes will have the correct millage printed on the cards, Bray said.

Borough audits

Public accounting firm McGill, Power, Bell & Associates has almost completed the borough’s 2022 and 2023 audits, according to firm representative Susan Cyphert.

She said all information in the 2022 audit represented the borough’s financial information fairly, and the council is verifying the accounting firm has all the information needed to complete the 2023 audit. Cyphert expects the audit to be completed by the end of March.

Bray said the process has shown the council must improve bookkeeping.

Once the audit comes back, and any discrepancies are reconciled, the accounting firm will submit the borough’s report to the Department of Community and Economic Development, and the council will be eligible to apply for grants.

Eagle assignment editor Tracy Leturgey contributed to this report.

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